something to do with you
by queeniee
Summary: axel is most certainly not a gardener, not that anyone seems to care. twoshot. axelroxas.
1. something bland

He's not some sort of gardener or something. He doesn't pull weeds or hedge grass or clean fucking pools all day and Marluxia's a bastard for pinning it on him. Fucking Marluxia and his free cruise to Nova Scotia of all places and fucking Larxene for demanding that she gets to go with him instead of Axel. Axel deserves a cruise to Nova Scotia way more than Larxene.

He pulls weeds with clumsy hands, yanking out clumps of soil along with plants. His knees ache from stooping over bushes so long and his fingers prickle from the stickers he'd accidentally grabbed at over the past two hours.

"Fucking house, fucking yard, fucking sun-"

Marluxia just had to make him fill in for him. He couldn't just get Xigbar to do it or Zexion or someone else, could he?

"But, you owe me," he'd said, with a file to his nails and a flip of his girly-ass hair like some fucking high school girl. "Remember that time at the music hall with that professor- what's his name?—Anwar? Ansem? Somethin' like that. You remember when I got him to pull your grade up last semester? You remember that?"

Why should he owe Marluxia for being a slut?

He thanks God that this is the last house on Marluxia's list. The Strife's house is pretty small compared to all the other ones, like those big-ass mansions up in that gated community, Destiny Islands, what with their snooty old people telling him to "lightly spritz" their flowers. No, this house is a nice in-between size, and they don't have anything special going on with their vegetation. Just bushes and some flowers in need of weeding and yards to mow and a small pool to brush.

When he's getting up to retrieve the lawn mower a girl somewhere between fourteen and seventeen comes out the front door. She's petite in an eating disorder sort of way and a shade of pale just short of sickly. Her hair is a bright, yellow-blonde and her eyes are big and a blue almost unnaturally bright.

In a distinctively dainty manner she holds a silver cell phone to her ear with one hand and a spiral sketchpad under her other arm.

"I had to scrub all the dishes 'cause the washing machine, like, practically exploded last night," she says into the phone, biting down on her lower lip. "My mom's been going **ballistic** and Roxas is still eating all the Blue Bell and watching reruns of Dawson's Creek in the living room. It's so sad."

The lawn mower makes a loud, guttural noise when he wrenches it backwards, abruptly drawing the girl's attention to him.

"-no, it's not pitiful, Kairi. Hayner's been Roxas' friend since practically elementary school. He's gotta right to be upset I think."

Axel has the lawnmower to the front grass and is just about to start it up when the girl gives out a shyly toned call of "Hey. Hey, gardener!"

He bristles at "gardener", but responds to it anyway. He doesn't want Marluxia bitching at him for losing customers on a count of his "rude-ness".

"Yeah?"

"You're not the normal gardener," she says bluntly, as if he might not know he's not the normal gardener.

"No. I'm not."

"Where'd the other one go? Mr. Marluxia. Where'd he go?"

"He won a cruise to Nova Scotia."

"Nova Scotia? Why'd he win a cruise to a place like that?"

"Hell if I know."

She continues to gnaw on her lower lip, so much so that Axel wouldn't be surprised if blood started to dribble down her chin. Fiddling with her phone—open and close and open again—she finally says, "Do you want something? Like water or lemonade or- kool aid or something?"

He shrugs. "I'm alright."

She nods. "I'll tell Roxas to get you water anyways. Just in case."

Before he can say another word she's traipsing back into the house. She comes out a couple of minutes later, this time with a pastel blue messenger bag slung over her shoulder and a pout puckering her lips.

At the same time she gets to the driveway a shiny, blue convertible bug pulls up, manned by a girl with auburn-red hair in a trendy cut and plum-purple eyes glued to the rearview mirror she'd repositioned to touch up her face.

"Roxas'll get you some water," the girl says to him as she passes. At the curb, with her hand already holding the door handle, she looks over her shoulder to him and quickly says, "Tell Mr. Marluxia I say hello, would you?"

"'Course," he replies with a cocky smile.

She nods, albeit a little unsurely, and slides into the car. Before the door even fully closes it's whizzing away and out of sight and Axel is alone with the lawnmower in the front yard.

--

By the time the boy that Axel assumes is Roxas comes out with the water, Axel has mowed and weeded the front and back and is struggling to pry the pool brush from the fence.

"Hey!"

The brush abruptly comes off, sending Axel reeling, free arm pinwheeling and hopping about in an effort to keep his balance. He ends up with both feet pigeon-toed on the cement, one arm bent awkwardly to keep hold of the pool brush, and a blond-haired boy snickering at him.

Axel scowls, regaining his composure quickly. "What do ya' want?" he demands.

Still snickering, Roxas runs his free hand through his cornflower-coloured hair, the spikes, surprisingly enough, moving easy and soft between his fingers. His eyes are as bright and blue as his sister's, Axel notices.

"I got you some water," he replies and raises the glass, which is perspiring greatly and containing only one pathetic excuse for an ice cube bobbing at the surface. "Y'know, since you're working so hard and all."

"I am working hard," Axel retorts. To emphasize, he sticks the brush into the pool, sloshing around the thick expanse of forest green algae permeating the water. "Fuck, you're pool is dirty."

"Not my job to clean it." When Roxas turns his nose up at the pool, Axel thinks he looks like one of those preppy guys, hanging off their skinny girls and turning their noses up at everything. "What are you laughing at?"

"…Nuthin'. How long did you leave that water sitting around?"

Roxas' smirk dies quick and his eyes divert to the toes of his sneakers. "I got a call." He says no more and Axel decides it must be something personal and leaves it at that.

He begins to brush the pool. Roxas sets the glass on the ground next to the pool's rim and walks back inside without another word.

It only takes him a couple of minutes before he decides there's no cleaning this pool until somebody fixes up the chemicals. He writes a note at the bottom of the bill and goes up to knock on the front door.

He raps with his knuckles three short knocks and waits wit hands on his hips for Roxas to open the door. When he finally does he has a spoon ladled with what looks like cookie dough in his hand and a cordless phone cradled to his ear.

"I told you Sora- God. Just wait a sec', okay?" He gives Axel a withering look. "What do you want?"

"Your bill." He sticks the slip of paper under the boy's nose. "You guys need to change the chemicals in your pool if you ever want it to be blue again."

The bill is rudely snatched from his hand. "Fine. You can go now."

Axel opens up his mouth, the beginning's of some sort of smart-aleck retort on the top of his tongue when Roxas slams the door right in his face.

--

When he's driving his truck back home, he drops Marluxia a line. Marluxia'd been quite adamant about him calling, to make sure he hadn't done something detrimental to the business.

"Hello? Who is this?" Marluxia answers on the third ring with his normal, irritated tone.

"Hello to you too. It's Axel. I've finished a day's work, I'll have you know."

"What did you do? Did you fuck anything up? Because, I swear if you did I'll-"

"Calm down. I didn't fuck anything up," he interjects. "God, quit PMS-ing, wouldja'?"

"Not yet, you didn't."

"Well, if you didn't want to me to do all your fucking gardening you didn't have to make me-"

"Oh, did Namine ask for me?" Marluxia cuts him off mid-sentence, and Axel can clearly see him flipping his hair as he does it.

"Did who?" he asks, though he's already sure of who it is.

"Namine. The girl from the Strife house."

"Oh. Her? Yeah, she asked where you were at. Said to tell you she said hello."

"Did she?"

"Yeah."

"-Well, you'd better not go and fuck anything up, Axel, or I swear to God I'll fucking kill you when I get back!"

"Right. Got it."

Marluxia doesn't say goodbye. He huffs loudly and hangs up.

--


	2. something blue

"How long have you been a college drop-out?"

Axel wrenches a particularly deep-rooted weed from the ground in one torrential spray of dirt and root. He spits soil from his mouth with a grimace.

"What? I dunno, since, since fucking four months're something like that. Yeah, somewhere around January I think it was."

The pool is now a pleasant chlorine-blue and Roxas sits in the large stepping platform fully clothed, splashing water idly with his sneaker-clad feet. "Why'd you do that, anyway? What kinda person goes through all the trouble of getting into college and than just drops out—drops out in fucking January?"

No particularly witty answer comes immediately to Axel's mind, so he makes no reply and continues at pulling weeds.

Blisters on the heels of his palms are aching from his tight grip on the plants. He's been going every Saturday for four Saturdays and weeds only on the first and fourth (it's been two weeks longer than it should've because Marluxia got stuck up at some port with drugs on him and is still going through the appropriate court proceedings) and every time Roxas sits somewhere around him and talks to him. It's sort of pleasant in an at-least-it's-distracting sort of way, as long as he doesn't ask annoying questions about shit like college.

"What'd you major in anyways?" Roxas asks, flicking the water with one hand. "Were you like, a psychology major or somethin' like that?"

"I was a theatre major."

"Like plays and musicals and shit?"

"Yeah."

"Why'd you quit something like that? I mean, isn't theatre fun?"

"I just wasn't feeling it. I wasn't getting anything out of it."

"What the fuck?" Roxas makes an awkward sort of choking noise that might have been a laugh.

"Shut up. The fuck do you know anyway? You haven't even graduated high school yet," Axel retorts.

"I will in a couple months," Roxas says defensively.

"Yeah, yeah."

Roxas sniffs in that snooty way and Axel doesn't even have to turn around to know that the boy's got his arms folded across his chest and his mouth puckered into that childish pout just like his sister's.

"Aw, come on. I didn't fucking hurt your feelings, did I?"

"No. Shut up." Abruptly, Roxas noisily sloshes out of the water. His expensive-looking jeans and t-shirt dripping, he stalks through the porch and into the house without even saying goodbye. His arms are tightly crossed over his chest and there's a pout right to the crinkle of his bright blue eyes.

"C'mon. Roxas!"

The glass door slides shut. Roxas does not come outside again and Axel leaves the bill on the welcome mat.

--

There's this nice little ice cream parlor down on the Traverse Plaza. It's wedged between a big supermarket and a dingy movie theatre, looking too cute in a color-scheme of pastel pink and cream stripes and a big sign with "Aeris' Sweets" scrawled across it in loopy cursive.

When Axel isn't doing all Marluxia's gardening or working at his real job at Patrick Paperbacks he likes to go by it. The ice cream's actually pretty good and Aeris is pleasant enough and if he's looking particularly dingy he's almost guaranteed a free cone.

"Hiya, Axel." Yuffie smacks her gum—a brilliant shade of lime green—between her glossy lips at him as the doorbell jingles over his head. "Wutcha' up to?"

"I dunno. Just, y'know, work and shit," he replies amiably. "Marluxia's still got me running all his gardening shit, the bastard."

"Oh yeah?"

The parlor's near empty today. There's only one booth filled with a boy and a girl, both chattering excitedly over their bowls of assorted ice creams.

Yuffie sticks a scooper into the chocolate-chip mint none-too-conspicuously and, without even spitting out her damned gum, gives the scoop one long lick.

"How's he doing anyways? He doin' alright?"

"He's doin' fine, alright," he answers vaguely, knowing Yuffie doesn't really give a shit about Marluxia. "Demyx got into that fancy art college, last I heard. Y'know, the one up in Rhode Island?"

"He did? Really? That's fucking great," Yuffie says without sincerity. "Fucking great for Demyx." In one fluid motion she swallows her gum and lodges half the drip-y mess of ice cream into her mouth.

"You sound so overjoyed," Axel says sarcastically with a snarky smile and bemused eyes. "Now, I want two scoops—chocolate chip cookie dough on bottom, orange sherbet on top, chocolate sprinkle waffle cone."

"How the fuck do you stay so skinny? Bulimic sunova'—"

She sets her scooper on the pristine counter and goes about getting his order, not even bothering to mess with the register. Axel taps his nails against the counter mock-impatient and gives a little look around the counter.

The girl at the booth keeps looking to the bathroom door and twirling her spoon in a melted mess of chocolate and strawberry. The boy, a little on the pudgy side and obviously straining to hold the girl's waning attention, propels his arms in wild gesticulations in the midst of some story.

"Where've you been anyways?" Yuffie asks as she rolls the first scoop into the appropriate shape.

"I told you, I've been doing Marluxia's gardening run. His list's, like, miles long!" Behind him, the bathroom door swings open hard enough to hit the wall.

"You still coulda' come by. I get so lonely with just ol' Squall here, "she complains. "Have ya' met the old fart? He's so gloomy he scares all the lil' kids away when he's on register. Hopeless!"

"Ya' don't say."

"And Aeris doesn't come by too often. She's all busy with her wedding plans." She sticks her tongue out.

"Wedding? Who the fuck's she marrying?" he asks.

"Hell if I know. I never could tell if she was goin' with Cloud or Zack." She shrugs, blasé, and passes over his elaborate cone. "Y'know, I'm going to make you pay one of these days, no matter what Aeris says."

"Yeah right!" he laughs and turns away.

It's a little sudden, a little of a bombardment, when he sees Roxas slouched into the booth next to the pudgy boy, staring at him with unreadable eyes. He only thinks about going over for a split second, really. He only really, seriously thinks about going over for a moment—to say hello and say something clever and maybe even ruffle his bed-head mess of yellow hair.

Instead, he eats his ice cream, and gives Roxas a sad excuse for a wave—really, just a waggle of his fingers—and one of those half-assed half-smiles. Then, with the boy's eyes looking at him in that totally unreadable way they tend to do, he leaves the parlor and goes to find his truck in the overly-crowded parking lot outside.

--

He calls Demyx at around midnight, since he has no idea what the time difference will be and midnight seems like as good a time as any.

He tells a sleepy-sounding Demyx how Marluxia's still an ass and life's shit down here, but it's not so bad and he should probably give Yuffie a call sometime because Axel's pretty sure she misses him even if she doesn't say it. He fills Demyx in on monotonous details even tough Demyx doesn't sound like he's really listening and he can hear another person's irritated voice crackling across the line, telling Demyx to tell whoever it is to "shut the fuck up" and hang up.

"Axel, that's great and—"Demyx breaks off to yawn"—all, but I'm pretty fucking tired, y'know? Can I give you a ring another time, like in the afternoon or something?"

"Give you a ring? Who the fuck says that?" Axel exclaims, too loudly, too cheerily.

"Axe-el."

"Alright, alright. Jee-zus." He snorts into the phone. "I guess I'll 'give you a ring' later, then."

"Night, Axel."

"Yeah. Bye." When he hangs up, he can't think of anyone to call. He kind of wants to call Roxas, though. He kind of wants to hear what annoying sorts of questions Roxas would ask over a phone at midnight and he kind of wants to know what annoying sorts of answers he'd think to throw back.

He doesn't have Roxas' number, though, and Roxas probably wouldn't answer even if he did. They really didn't know each other, if he's thinking about it.

He goes to sleep on the couch with a re-run of Grey's Anatomy, of all things, playing and he goes to sleep thinking today is Saturday. Today's Saturday and he just might ask Roxas for his number, if he gets the proper chance.

--

"What the fuck was that?"

Before Axel is even out of his truck Roxas is stalking up to the window. He is scowling and his eyes are set in a withering glare and he's standing with the posture appropriate for an irate teenage girl. His hair is even more mussed than is per usual and he looks as if he must have been eating Blue Bell ice cream and watching Dawson's Creek up until very recently.

Axel cannot take him seriously.

"What the fuck was what?" he asks and he just can't keep the smirk off his face.

"The ice cream place!" Roxas practically yells. "You—what the fuck was that?"

"I waved?"

"You—you—you practically ignored me! You acted like you didn't even really know me!"

"Well, why should I have?"

Roxas' mouth flaps open and close, rather like a floundering goldfish Axel had once had, hands clenching and unclenching, and looking all-around upset.

"Well, what's got you all put out?" he asks.

Roxas doesn't answer. He shakes his head; places his shaking hands on the rim of the window. Axel smiles, amused, even though inside his mind is running quick with multiple overlapping thoughts flit-flying through his brain.

Roxas, bedraggled and skinny and with a determined glint in his eyes, he steps up on his tip-toes and presses his closed mouth to Axel's. He kisses like a boy who's hardly ever kissed, sloppy and chaste, but it's okay because it's just a little bit sweet and makes Axel just a little bit content.

His hand grasps at the slender curve of Roxas' throat and their kiss deepens and thinks he just might be getting out of mowing the yard today.

--


End file.
